See ack-ack in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From ack (“A”) + ack (“A”), RAF WWI signalese for AA (“anti-aircraft”). (In modern signalese it would be called alpha-alpha.)",
"forms": [
{
"form": "ack-acks",
"tags": [
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}
],
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"pos": "noun",
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28,
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"text": "Ack-acks were set up in the square.",
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172,
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"ref": "2015, Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins, →ISBN, page 140:",
"text": "He had thought how down there on the ground, on enemy soil, there were probably hundreds of Ivys, nice Fräuleins with buck teeth and fiancés on U-boats, manning the German ack-ack, all united in an effort to kill him.",
"type": "quotation"
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"glosses": [
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"id": "en-ack-ack-en-noun-VjLP77Wo",
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"(military slang) Antiaircraft artillery."
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"text": "The bomber flew through heavy ack-ack.",
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"glosses": [
"Antiaircraft fire."
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"id": "en-ack-ack-en-noun-h0c1~s~R",
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"(military slang, uncountable) Antiaircraft fire."
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"sense": "anti-aircraft gun",
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{
"_dis1": "50 50",
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{
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"Pages with 1 entry",
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"en:Artillery"
],
"etymology_text": "From ack (“A”) + ack (“A”), RAF WWI signalese for AA (“anti-aircraft”). (In modern signalese it would be called alpha-alpha.)",
"forms": [
{
"form": "ack-acks",
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}
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"text": "Ack-acks were set up in the square.",
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172,
179
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"ref": "2015, Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins, →ISBN, page 140:",
"text": "He had thought how down there on the ground, on enemy soil, there were probably hundreds of Ivys, nice Fräuleins with buck teeth and fiancés on U-boats, manning the German ack-ack, all united in an effort to kill him.",
"type": "quotation"
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"(military slang) Antiaircraft artillery."
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"text": "The bomber flew through heavy ack-ack.",
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"glosses": [
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{
"sense": "anti-aircraft gun",
"word": "AAA"
},
{
"sense": "anti-aircraft gun",
"word": "AA"
}
],
"word": "ack-ack"
}
Download raw JSONL data for ack-ack meaning in English (2.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-01-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.